


1996 Ferrari F50 going south at 20mph vs. 1981 Yamaha RD350 heading north, decelerating from 45mph

by anselm0



Series: Vault of Secrets [1]
Category: Psych
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-15
Updated: 2019-03-15
Packaged: 2019-11-16 11:16:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18093284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anselm0/pseuds/anselm0
Summary: Unlike Gus, Shawn is great at keeping secrets. Most of the time.(aka the 'really, no one has written backstory for James Roday's sternotomy scar and we're all fine with that?' fic)(now renamed as the 'okay, so other people have done that but I needed to also' fic)





	1996 Ferrari F50 going south at 20mph vs. 1981 Yamaha RD350 heading north, decelerating from 45mph

**2004**

The second-biggest secret in his life Shawn let slip by accident. To be fair, his father had probably been lulling him into a false sense of security. Henry could almost always tell when he was hiding something. It was one of his worst qualities as a father.

But having spent his entire life practicing, Shawn could pull it off. When Henry immediately noticed the scar on his lip, he was ready with a fun story about dirt biking in Colorado and getting hit by his own handlebars when the bike bucked out from under him. That was a true story, which Henry had taught him was the best way to lie. Completely unrelated, of course, but it was a plausible scenario and had the added virtue of being something Henry disapproved of (having fun) and confirmed his prior judgements (Shawn is a thrill-seeking idiot), quickly diverting him into familiar territory of beratement and letting Henry feel like he’d sussed out a secret.

Henry was wily, though, so he could have had a hunch that there was more to the scar. Or maybe he’d noticed that Shawn’s bike and helmet were both new despite him never having worked a job longer than four months. In any case, Shawn was fully prepared to lay the blame for his slip with Henry.

The truth was that Shawn had forgotten. He didn’t think about it anymore, and as soon as he wasn’t thinking about something, it tended to slip Shawn’s mind. Henry thought that was one of his worst qualities, but it was Henry’s fault that Shawn noticed everything constantly. He had to let most of it go in one eye and right out the other if he didn’t want to end up on the funny farm.

He’d been back in Santa Barbara for only one week, just long enough to swing through the Cinnamon Festival and get his bike serviced in the garage on Salinas. It was a little more expensive and out of his way, but they did good work and Danny didn’t mind Shawn hanging around to chat. Shawn liked to impress him by profiling the drivers of the cars in the garage. They weren’t friends per se – Shawn had only been there a few times on the rare occasions he returned to Santa Barbara and Danny was still tight with guys from high school– but they could swap funny stories about Shawn’s string of odd jobs for Danny’s weird customers and the bizarre ways they found to mess up a Honda Civic. If Danny wasn’t too busy, Shawn could buy him lunch in exchange for a few lessons on motorcycle maintenance. He’d deliberately not cared about cars to annoy Henry, who loved that yellow pickup right down to its constantly failing spark plugs, so Shawn got an extra layer of enjoyment out of asking Danny to teach him stuff he had mostly already picked up by observation. He had no incentive to learn the proper names of the parts instead of memorizing where they were and how they looked because getting them absurdly wrong made Danny laugh instead of getting annoyed.

He was so tempted to tell Danny the real story behind the scar on his lip and the super impressive one on his chest, but he manfully resisted. Danny didn’t know his dad, but it was a great story. If Shawn told it to anybody in Santa Barbara, it might make its way back to Henry. He never told Gus because he would absolutely tell his parents. Mr. and Mrs. Guster weren’t close with Henry but if they heard Shawn had had open heart surgery, they would definitely pick up the phone.

Anyway, it wasn’t even that big a deal. He had kept it secret at first because Henry would have gone ballistic and it would have made his mom cry and then she would have probably made him promise to give up his motorcycle. It wasn’t his motorcycle’s fault, but they had been prejudiced against it from the beginning and they wouldn’t see reason past their motorcycle racism, Shawn knew. After a few years of keeping the secret, Shawn figured it being a secret would make it seem so much worse than it was if it ever got out, so he would have to keep it forever.

So Shawn had gotten used to wearing undershirts, even when it was warm. He sometimes kept them on while having sex, though he also had a breezy story about trying to donate a lung to a guy who turned out to have a surgery fetish instead of lung failure ready to go if his date insisted on getting her hands on his body. Few things in Shawn’s experience shut down sexytimes faster than the words “open heart surgery”. He’d never had a relationship long enough for a girl to be entitled to more than the surgery fetish story, which was the way he preferred it. Anyway, the scar faded over time and it was pretty easy to overlook if it was dark and you didn’t feel the perfectly straight nine-inch line of smooth skin. The rest of the time, he kept his shirt on, and he did burn easily, so he had a good excuse for wearing a surf guard if he ever went swimming.

Unfortunately, like most Americans, Shawn forgot to account for global warming.

He wore his leather jacket to the garage to see Danny, both because he had some respect for road safety and because it was a sweet jacket. He took it off there because it was hot even with the fans on, but he put it back on when he left. It was almost five in the afternoon by then, but the day had only gotten muggier. He had stupidly worn a long sleeve shirt in lieu of his usual t-shirt and overshirt layering because he liked rolling up his sleeves like a real mechanic would, but he hadn’t rolled them back down and there was an annoying prickle of sweat under the fabric bunched in his elbow creases by the time he got back to Henry’s house. He didn’t love staying there, but it was free. Henry was fishing or gardening basically all day every day in his retirement and it wasn’t like Shawn was hanging around in the evenings, so they could mostly ignore each other.

Henry was working on the lawnmower in the driveway, another old machine that broke down every other week but he stubbornly kept fixing rather than replacing. Shawn felt obliged to comment, “You know, I hear lawnmowers made after the Reagan administration are more reliable.”

“See, that’s your problem, Shawn.” Henry had a well-developed capacity for picking up his string of complaints about Shawn as if he had never left off. According to him, Shawn had a million problems, and the solution or all of them was being exactly like Henry. “You always want the fancy new thing when the old thing works just fine.”

“I can see that,” Shawn said, letting the tarp covered in greasy disassembled parts speak for itself. He heaved a sigh of relief as he got his helmet off. “At least do that in the shade. Think how silly you’d feel getting sunstroke in your own driveway.”

Henry snorted. “I’ve worked harder than this on days hotter than this. Global warming this and that – it’s summer! It gets hot. Your problem is you picked looking pretty over comfort.”

“It’s barely mid-May and these are my regular clothes!” Shawn paused with only one arm out of his jacket. “Leathers protect against road burn, okay, your wallet should appreciate my forward thinking. And if you don’t want to pay for therapy, either, never again call me pretty.”

Henry made a dismissive/irritated/constipated series of noises Shawn had learned to tune out before high school, but he tossed Shawn a beer from the cooler pocket on his lawn chair, so Shawn figured whatever he had ignored wasn’t that important He pressed the cold bottle to his forehead and neck as he shook his jacket the rest of the way off. Condensation dripped down the back of his shirt, which felt almost as delicious as the first sip of a pineapple smoothie, a fact that perhaps explained why Shawn was not thinking as he pulled the hem of shirt up to wipe his sweaty face.

“Shawn,” Henry said in a tone of voice Shawn knew meant imminent trouble. “What’s that scar on your stomach?”

“Uh.” To his eternal shame, Shawn blanked. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Shawn.”

“Probably just a shadow on my chiseled abs.”

“Shawn!”

“Oh, come on, Dad.” Shawn swung for the fences of nonchalance, cracking open his beer with the Pomona College bottle opener that came with Gus’s acceptance letter and which Shawn had promptly stolen. “It’s from when I got my appendix out. Doctor said it was the biggest one he’d ever seen, and you know what they say about men with large organs.”

 “Do you think I’m an idiot who doesn’t know where the appendix is, Shawn? Or do you think I don’t know that you only call me Dad when you’re trying to lie to me?”

“I’m not—” Shawn cut himself off; Henry would never buy a straight denial. “I didn’t tell you because I knew you’d be irrational.”

“Oh, so it’s irrational to be upset that my kid had open heart surgery?”

“Clearly, I’m fine!”

“Oh, you’re fine. That’s great, Shawn.” Henry yanked the collar of his shirt sideways, popping the other two buttons and exposing the top of the scar. “What the hell happened?”

Shawn made a show of shaking spilled beer off his hand. “As you can see, this scar is obviously years old, _Henry_ , so there’s no need to go to DEFCON 5.”

“DEFCON 5 is the lowest level of emergency, you mean DEFCON 1.”

“I’ve heard it both ways, but whatever. I was in an accident in 1999, which before you say anything, was not my fault, not even a little bit. Some kid turned into traffic on a blind corner and I tried to slow down but I hit him head-on. I don’t really remember anything after that until I woke up from surgery. The doctor said,” and now Shawn had to actively try to remember because he didn’t like to think about having been that close to death, “I had a valve problem that made a balloon near my heart and the impact put a little tear in it. They patched the balloon and fixed the valve since they were already, you know, in the neighborhood. I’m a hundred percent A-okay now.”

Henry doesn’t look any less angry at him. “I really wasn’t going that fast,” Shawn repeats, because it seems like he missed that important detail. “I didn’t even break any ribs. Cracks don’t count.”

“Jesus Christ, Shawn. I can’t believe—” Holding up his hands for stop, Henry recollected his thoughts. “You were in an accident that bad and you didn’t call me? You didn’t call your mother? How did you pay for all this on your own, Shawn? You don’t have medical insurance!”

Shawn had to take a step back because Henry knew how much he hated attempted looming and he did it anyway. “That’s what you’re hung up on? The money?”

“You brought it up! It’s a serious issue, Shawn. That debt doesn’t just go away because you aren’t there to get the payment due notices.”

“I know! I’ve been on my own for years, I know how bills work.”

“Do you? Because I heard you had to leave your last two apartments after getting evicted for overdue rent. Yes, Shawn,” he preempted the betrayal that must be on Shawn’s face, “she told me. Your mom and I still talk so we can make sure someone bails you out when you mess up. I just want to know if I need to take out a mortgage to keep you out of jail.”

The heavy swoop of humiliation in Shawn’s stomach hit like a wave and burst into a high, numbing anger. “See, this is why I didn’t tell you. I could have died, and you still only care about how it affects _you_ , how it reflects on _you_. You know what?” He tossed the beer back to his father, getting a mean satisfaction from seeing it slosh onto Henry’s ugly shirt. “We should stop kidding ourselves. You’re out of my life. I’m out of yours. Let’s keep it that way, shall we?”

When he smiled humorlessly, he thought he could still feel the scar on his lip from where he’d cut himself with a piece of glass in his glove when he took off his helmet. He didn’t remember that, but he’d tried to get up, get to the driver of the car to see if they were okay. At least that’s what he thought had happened, based on what the paramedics he’d tracked down said they found at the scene and clues on the clothes he’d gotten back from the hospital. Playing the hero was the sort of thing Henry would have expected him to do in a crisis. At the time, he’d had the wind knocked out of him and his heart was a little exploded, so whatever Shawn had been trying to do, it didn’t make much difference to the result, which was him passing out on the side of the road.

“What the hell are you doing? Shawn! _Shawn_!”

Shawn pretended he couldn’t hear him. His bag was still upstairs in his old room, but it was only a few clothes and some toiletries. Henry could burn it for all he cared. That bottle of hair gel was basically empty anyway.

“When you call Mom to rat me out for not telling you about a totally uneventful surgery five years ago,” he said, cutting through Henry’s shouting with his perfect, Zen-like calm. “You can tell her that the kid who caused the accident, his parents paid all my medical bills and bought me a new bike _and_ they let me name their Kentucky Derby horse. His name is an incredible pun but I’m going to tell it to her myself the next time I call because you’ll mess it up.”

“Whoa, hold up. Where are you going? Don’t—”

“Don’t worry, I won’t be calling you. Bye, Henry!”

He flipped his visor shut with a satisfying clack and sped off with his jacket in his lap, which sadly was not as cool as wearing it. He was in a hurry and could always pull over and put it on when it finally cooled down. Shawn did take care to run over some important-looking lawnmower pieces, but they were on his way.

Henry kept yelling at him to stop and get back there, but he was probably just upset about the lawnmower. Possibly about the fact that Shawn hadn’t lived down to his cynical expectations. In any case, it was nothing worth going back to.

He and Henry didn’t speak again for two years.


End file.
